"Try it," grinned Dick, who was one of the party. "Ask Alec to jump on the wings, or--oh, I know, Mr. Reitberg, try a ride on one yourself! It'd be a ripping sensation to lie out there on one of the planes while she was soaring." "Brat! Conceited young midshipman! Wants kicking!" Carl thought angrily. "But if they've come all the way from the neighbourhood of Adrianople, why, I suppose the machine is strong enough. Horrible it seems to me! But I must screw up my courage. Ah! He's started his engine. Why couldn't he wait a little longer till I'd settled down. Stay still there, young man. We're moving, and if you get too much to one side the thing will capsize once we're off the ground." Alec regarded the trembling magnate with a pitying smile, though quite politely. "Oh, that's with ordinary aeroplanes, sir," he said loftily. "You can't upset this. You ask Joe. We'll try, just to impress you." "Try to upset the machine when in the air! Madness!" Carl positively scowled at Alec, and then at Dick, catching him grinning. Then his attention was called elsewhere. Joe shut down his bypass valve abruptly. The propellers roared. The biplane shot forward and mounted into the air as if eager for a struggle. They were up a hundred yards before their passenger had had time to fasten his grip quite to his own liking on the edge of the cab. Then Joe banked her. "Put me down!" roared Carl, scared out of his senses, for the machine had tilted, and from his own position he could look direct to the ground beneath. He felt the machine slipping bodily sideways. "Got in an air hole," observed Joe calmly. "Skidding a trifle. But she can't go far. The cross sections between the planes hold her up nicely. Up we go again, turning all the time. Hold on for a moment." It was truly a terrifying experience for Carl, and he never quite became accustomed to this new form of locomotion. Even when Joe, having elevated the machine to the height of ten thousand feet, set the automatic gear in motion, and, lighting a cigarette in the shelter of the cab, went to chat with the Major, the magnate felt far from happy. "But--but," he quavered, "leave the steering gear! Who, then, controls this machine? What is to prevent us being dashed to pieces?" "Atoms, rather," suggested Dick, always ready with something likely to improve the occasion. "Eh?" asked Carl. "You said pieces," grinned the midshipman. "We're ten thousand feet up. We wouldn't make jelly even if we fell. We'd be smashed to atoms." "Horrible! Loathsome young fool!" thought Carl, groaning at the mere mention of such an ending. "Anything will be more pleasant than this. When will this awful trip be over?"